FAIR WEATHER CURRENT (FWC)

Someday, that right book written by the right people at the right time and at the right place might revise its present estimates of electric current between earth and sky; upwards by several orders of magnitude. A little truth here and there makes for a better science.
Some solar energy following various endothermic paths becomes stored as electrical energy by displacement of electrons from the electrosphere onto the the earth's solid and liquid surfaces. Much of that electrical charging occurs during rainstorms with the fall of negatively charged precipitation and lightning discharges throughout the globe. Those surface electrons are joined by others from below in what this blog describes as a repolarization process. These electrons are detained along the surface by gravity, and become distributed to the atmosphere by their mutual repulsion into apportionment favoring high ground AKA distance from the electrostatic center of the earth. Therefore, we may contemplate various intensities of negative ion populations along the global surface, running from almost nothing atop the oceans, especially near the poles or at low tide in troughs between the waves; to maximums atop great mountain ranges.

Release of electrons from those populations to the atmosphere would surely vary according to electrical intensity and other surface factors such as temperature and texture of the terrain. Fair Weather Current, considered as the negative flow of such particle release, entails the migration of electrons from where they had been to where they are going. For any amount of electrons to have been where they were in the first place, they would have had to tarry. Electrons tarry halfway up a mountain or in a pit about as well as water tarries halfway down or at the peak. Hence there might be sufficient FWC to poach an egg atop Mount Kilimanjaro but nary a picoamp per square meter at the North Pole once we melt the ice away.

Sadly, a revered tome proffered to advanced scholars of meteorology appraises global FWC at a total current of some one thousand Amperes. That figure would be taken from fallacious measurements taken from the ocean-going sailboats Maude and Carnegie. Their typical peak FWCs of some 2 picoamps measured per square meter of ocean surface taken as the global average for the 0.51 billion square kilometers of Earth's surface brought them to estimate total FWC as some one thousand Amperes. Ask an electroplater how easy it is to plate the inside of a ring!
A century-old blunder haunts and corrupts the lore of our scientific doctrine.

Corrected estimates of FWC could offer useful insight on how we might abate the ferocity of hurricanes. If we could encourage lightning on the open seas, we would be dispersing energy from monstrous storms and thereby pulling its punches.

SNOWFLAKES

The pronounced negative bias of Earth's atmosphere contributes to the formation of snowflakes. Typically. beginning with the six corner points of an initial ice crystal, those points constitute a symmetrical pattern of negative ion concentrations that beckon to relatively positive atmosphere to draw flow of moist air upon the central hub of the crystal.

As natural electrical phenomena equalize distribution of moisture and electrons from the hub, primarily to the six vertexes, extreme ion density is developed upon tips of condensed moisture that are drawn to fine points by electrostatic repulsion. Those pointed strands remain liquid until further condensation covers them, thereby lifting away the ionic congestion that prevents solidification, and so the snowflake grows.

Those sharp tips on snowflakes encourage corona discharge to such extent that lightning is rarely encountered within a snowfall.

PLEASE CONSULT OLDEST POST FIRST

The March 2 posting: ANOTHER FORCE establishes an essential premise.


A. Dale Miller